Thursday, March 19, 2009

Necklace for Ada


This necklace will be one of the door prizes at the Christi Friesen workshop that will benefit Ada Silapiruti. Ada is the daughter of Ponsawan who made the mosaic I blogged about a few posts back. Just over a year ago Ada was in a terrible car accident involving a drunk driver. Read about Ponsawan's art here and all about Ada and her road to recovery here.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Warm Weather and Smooth Beads!

Yesterday the weather was so beautiful, 65 and Sunny! The kids played outside all afternoon, and I actually got some findings put onto a group of pendants while they played.
For the past several weeks I've been filling up a bag with beads and pendants that needed to be sanded. Since I hate sanding I had been putting it off and putting off, now I was left with this huge bag of unfinished stuff! I decided to buckle down and I told myself I could not work with raw clay until my beads were sanded. Now I know that a lot of people use a tumbler to sand their smaller beads, and I've tried that too, but I just don't feel like the quality is as good. So I do everything by hand. It took me forever but I finally finished the bag so now I need to put everything together into finished pieces. During the 13+ hours of sanding I did discover a new little trick! I generally shy away from round beads because mainly they are so hard to hold onto when I sand. But not any more! I discovered that I can use my needle tool to poke through the hole (I don't pierce all the way through so it fits tightly) and use it as a handle with the smaller beads! The saves time and my finger nails! I'm sure this idea is not original but it helped so much! Today should be another nice day so maybe I'll get some more work done. Happy Friday to everyone!